U.S Box Office Report - 24th - 26th August 2007

1. Superbad - $18M - $68M
2. The Bourne Ultimatum - $12.3M - $185M
3. Rush Hour 3 - $12.2M - $109M
4. Mr. Bean's Holiday - $10.1M - $10.1M
5. War - $10M - $10M
6. The Nanny Diaries - $7.8M - $7.8M
7. The Simpsons Movie - $4.4M -$173.4M
8. Stardust -  $3.9M - $26.4M
9. Hairspray - $3.4M - $107.4M
10. The Invasion - $3.1M - $11.5M

A week of new releases failed to eject Superbad from the top spot. Superbad has now crossed the $65M mark and may even go as far as $100M. The movie is off 45% in its second weekend and crossed the $50M mark on Thursday. Made for just $20M, Superbad should turn a nice profit for the studio and is actually performing along the same lines as Knocked Up, which was produced by the same team. Next week sees three new releases set to challenge Superbad's crown, including comedy Balls of Fury. For now, Superbad is the last big success of summer 2007.

This weekend The Bourne Ultimatum became the most successful of the series as it crossed the $176M taken by The Bourne Supremacy. The film will see $200M before the end of its domestic run, perhaps as high as $215M. Globally the movie sits on $218M and still has a large number of foreign markets to expand into. Enough yet to convince Damon to do a fourth movie?

Off a not bad 42% this weekend, Rush Hour 3 manages to scrap past the $100M mark. Losing business fast, this hasn't proved to be the success that the studio has hoped for (after the $227M of Rush Hour 2, anything was possible) and this may well signal the end of the Rush Hour franchise. Ratner & Co must now rely on foreign numbers to get it past the $140M production budget (though the movie will need closer to $240M to turn a profit due to the percentage takes awarded to Chan, Tucker & Ratner).

Mr Bean's Holiday has already opened in most territories across the world and been insanely successful, closing in on $200M. The first Bean movie did ok business in the US when it was released in a somewhat limited capacity in 2007. That movie went on to take $45M over the next 8 weekends. Mr Bean's Holiday looks unlikely to repeat that success and will probably finish somewhere in the region of $35M, but with that foreign box office already in the bank, it's opening weekend in the US isn't a big deal.

Our second new entry is the action thriller War. Starring Jet Li and Jason Statham as an assassin and cop respectively and marks their second teaming up after The One in 2001. That film opened to $19M but only managed to add a further $24M before the end of its domestic run. This one will be lucky to make it to $24M after that opening figure. Next weekend in the US is Labour Day and in both 2005 and 2006, Statham has had the number one film over that period with The Transporter 2 and Crank. Why not release this next weekend? Well, next weekend sees the release of the aforementioned Balls of Fury, alongside Halloween (2007 remake) and the Kevin Bacon revenge thriller Death Sentence, so it might be the studio figured War had more of a chance against this week's releases than next weeks (the Halloween remake may well have taken a chunk out of the potential WAR crowd than Mr Bean's Holiday). This one will vanish quickly on to DVD where it may actually outgross its cinematic earnings.

A movie with a bit of pedigree opens in sixth place - The Nanny Diaries stars Scarlet Johansson and Laura Linney and is firmly in the Devil Wears Prada demographic. So far so good until the Weinstein Company suddenly shifted its release to the graveyard that is late August. That move alone set alarm bells ringing and they've only gotten louder once the press (and the public judging by that opening figure) got hold of the movie. This is another one that'll vanish quickly, adding another dent in the Weinstein's disappointing year.

The Simpsons Movie has pretty much bottomed out now and should end up with around $185M. Elsewhere the movie is closing in on $280M and may eventually see a global total (inc. US grosses) of half a billion dollars. Expect an extras-laden DVD to shift a large number of units too.

Stardust just can't get a break - after a poor opening and second weekend it faces off a group of lacklustre releases and still can't do better than $3.9. Stardust needed to be released in December rather than a crowded late summer. It might not have performed exceptionally well but it would have had chance to breath a little, instead the movie will leave the top ten next weekend.

Hairspray, also seeing its last weekend in the top ten, has taken an impressive $107M. Along with Knocked Up, Hairspray could be seen as something of a sleeper hit. It's spending its sixth weekend in the charts and has seen bigger movies come and go in that time. The movie has a global total of $130M.

As for The Invasion? It's like the relative everyone wishes hadn't turned up for the party and now he's here they just want to him to vanish as quickly as possible. This movie probably won't even recoup the cost of its prints, let alone anything else. Expect this to go straight to video everywhere, save for Britain, where they'll try and play up the Daniel Craig angle.

Opening outside the top ten was the Samuel L Jackson boxing drama Ressurecting The Champ, which performed the best of the three remaining new releases, with both September Dawn and Illegal Tender failing to find much of an audience.